Japanese characters often become garbled when you work with CSV or text files in Microsoft Excel. To avoid the problem, use the Unicode encoding option when importing the data into Excel. Unicode is an international standard that includes support for most foreign alphabets. Excel doesn't provide a Unicode option for saving Japanese data to the CSV or delimited text formats, however, so you must first transfer the Excel data to another application with better Unicode support.

Importing From CSV or Text

3. Select the CSV or text file containing the Japanese characters, and then click "Open." The Text Import Wizard starts automatically.

4. Change the "File Origin" setting to "Unicode (UTF-8)." Check the Japanese characters in the preview pane. If they don't display in a Japanese font, the characters may be saved in a different format. Try selecting UTF-7 or one of the JIS-based encodings listed under "Japanese" until the characters display correctly.

5. Select "Delimited" as the data type, unless you are imported a fixed-width text file, in which case select "Fixed Width." Click "Next."

6. Select "Comma" as the delimiter for a CSV file. For a text file, either select the appropriate delimiter or adjust the fixed column width in the preview pane. Click "Next."

7. Click "Finish" to complete the import. The Japanese characters should now display correctly in Excel. You can save the file as an Excel file or an OpenDocument Spreadsheet file without losing the Japanese fonts. If you must save the data as a CSV file, use the workaround described in the following section.

Saving Japanese As CSV

1. Save the data with the Japanese characters as either an Excel file or an OpenDocument Spreadsheet, or ODS, file. The OpenDocument format is a public standard supported by almost all spreadsheet applications.

2. Open the new file in either Apache OpenOffice or Google Sheets. OpenOffice is a free office application you can download from the Apache website (link in Resources), while Google Sheets is the free spreadsheet app on Google Drive (link in Resources).

3. Save the file in the CSV format. In OpenOffice, change the Character Set setting to "Unicode (UTF-8)" when the Export Text File dialog box appears. Google Sheets saves the characters as UTF-8 automatically.

Warning

Information in this article applies to Excel 2013 and OpenOffice 4. It may vary slightly or significantly with other versions or products.

About the Author

Alan Sembera began writing for local newspapers in Texas and Louisiana. His professional career includes stints as a computer tech, information editor and income tax preparer. Sembera now writes full time about business and technology. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Texas A&M University.